Veneciafrenia (2021)

A rather loud and somewhat obnoxious group of Spaniards arrives at Venice for a bit of partying and general mayhem as a sort of send-off before Isa (Ingrid García Jonsson) gets married to her absent fiancée. But don’t call it a hen party, please.

As it goes in these films, the gang gets into trouble soon enough, or really, more than one kind of trouble. There’s a murderous, stinky guy in a harlequin costume going around murdering tourists in silly, brutal ways, for one, but there may also be a greater conspiracy between parts of the Venetians who have had enough of the loud and unpleasant type of tourist arriving on a ecologically problematic cruise ship. Despite their best efforts, our Spanish protagonists actually take some time to get into truly dangerous situations, but once the first member of the group has disappeared, there’s little hope for the rest of them anymore. Particularly since these idiots are rather bad at providing the local police with any worthwhile hints or suggestions. Why, Isa can’t even produce a single photo of her own brother! And no, this isn’t setting up a plot twist.

I have a curious relationship with the body of work of director Álex de la Iglesia. His films are much beloved by many people whose opinions about these things I appreciate, but mostly, his general air of shrillness and crudity, often presented with an added bit of misogyny, does very little for me.

So, ironically as well as logically, those films of his I do enjoy are usually exactly those everybody else seems to have a problem with. This Venice-set modern giallo is a case in point, apparently, and most de la Iglesia fans seem to think this a very minor example of the director’s art and style. I, on the other hand, enjoyed this mix of giallo and somewhat ugly foreigner abroad tropes, with a pinch of conspiracy based on a very real problem. (Though de la Iglesia goes out of its way to not pretend every Venetian anti-cruise ship activist is a lunatic movie murderer).

I found myself particularly fond of the leisurely plotting of the whole affair, where long scenes of our tourists acting out and annoying the locals are used to very slowly build up tension and paranoia. Even though De la Iglesia is not the kind of visual stylist the great giallo masters in whose steps he follows here were, he finds quite a bit of creepy imagery. Carnival masks and cities going to ruin are of course gifts that keep on giving in this regard, but the film is also genuinely good at creating a general air of tension (rather than a more precise feeling of it) through many a shot of pissed-off Venetians, of dark canals and streets, and many a masked person who may or may not be involved in any of the plot(s). This does of course not for a zippy film make. I believe this works to this particular film’s advantage, though, and is most certainly keeping in the spirit of the giallo, as are some rather strained examples of randomness throughout that don’t really make much sense.

The film’s pace is a bit peculiar in other regards, as well. Particularly the climax is placed strangely. The actual dramatic centrepiece of the film happens rather earlier than you’d expect, and what comes after builds up to another big confrontation that then never actually comes to pass. This kind of refusal of gratification only a director of great experience and eccentricity could pull off – or even just be interested in - and de la Iglesia certainly is that, whatever else I may think of him.

In short: Las brujas de Zugarramurdi (2013)

aka Witching and Bitching

I do remember a time, once in the long ago, when Álex de la Iglesia’s transgressive horror comedies were actually transgressive. Not that I liked them much, mind you, because they always had the whiff of watching films made by who did not give much of a throught about who the targets of his humour were as long as his films got someone outraged, and convinced someone else to defend him for reasons of art (seldom of, you know, substance to that art, alas). I always thought his films lacked any actual conviction, or anger, or bitterness, or love that would direct where he pointed his humour at.

This time around, it’s especially difficult not to see the lack of an actual edge in this tired sequence of mild misogyny and bored homophobia. I’m sure, parts of outrage culture will still be outraged (that’s what it lives off, after all, be it in the guise of right-wing guardians of public morals and freedom or of identity politically moved guarding the very same thing) but I couldn’t help but find myself bored by the tiredness of it all, yawning through much of the film, and finding my patience tried not by any moral apprehensions but by how little the film actually works at shocking – or entertaining, for that matter – its audience, as if shouting some shitty nonsense about women would even be worthy of notice. Being a prick who only spouts lame clichés, it turns out, isn’t all that transgressive in my book, just vaguely unpleasant, like the proverbial racist uncle one pointedly doesn’t talk to once a year yet who never seems worth the effort to actually get angry.


It doesn’t help the film as a horror comedy that it’s often quite sluggishly paced and needs nearly an hour to actually get going, but then, why should that part of the movie suggest any more intellectual or emotional involvement than anything else in it?

Three Films Make A Post: A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste

Abracadabra aka Loves of the Living Dead aka Heaven Wife, Hell Wife (none of which actually is a very useful title for the film at hand, but what can you do?) (1986): It’s a late 80s Hong Kong horror comedy, so you should pretty much know what to expect – weird slapstick, the frightening mating rituals of the late 80s HK movie youth, lots and lots and lots of blue, red and green light, dry ice machines running overtime, much running around and a barely discernible back story that could work for a ghost tragedy if the film cared to use it (of course it doesn’t). We also learn things like the fact you can get rid of ghosts with blow driers because they hate electricity (ghosts are radio waves, you see, and therefore allergic to electricity), meet a friendly ghost taxi driver who likes punk-style haircuts, and so on. It’s not so crazy it deserves its own blog entry, but there’s quite a bit of fun to be had with Peter Mak Tai-Kit’s film, and some rather stylish use of said traditional HK ghost colours to gawk at.

Harry Price: Ghost Hunter (2015): If you’re like me and could care less this isn’t even trying to be a portrait of the actual historical Harry Price, nor about an “actual” (cough) haunting, you just might appreciate this fine British TV movie for the clever film about truth, lies, belief and the unsuspected depths of people beyond their outward signifiers of “identity” for what it is. Sure, the haunting bits aren’t particularly creepy, but this is really rather a character based mystery that include the possible supernatural as something to put pressure on the characters, so it doesn’t need to be. What the film offers instead is more thematic richness than I expected going in, or as the film’s tone suggests, more Sarah Grey than Harry Price (which is a good thing), some deft ways to place the plot historically, and the typical high standards of acting and art direction of British TV period pieces.

The Oxford Murders (2008): When one thinks Álex de la Iglesia, one usually would not have in mind a film like this British/Spanish/French co-production based on a Spanish philosophical mystery novel that looks rather well-funded. Well, at least I would not. Which is a bit of a shame, because I did enjoy this one rather more than the shrilly screeching cinema de la Iglesia usually delivers. Turns out the man can build a mood, knows how to provide space for an actor like John Hurt (who has been doing wonderful work wherever he goes during the last ten years or so, as a journeyman actor in all the good meanings of the term, leaving behind class wherever he goes), can film long dialogue scenes without either feeling the need to show off how creatively he can film them or leaving his film feel draggy, and uses his senses of play and of the grotesque much more effectively when they are not the only tricks he has up his sleeve.